In which I write down all those musings of which the world has been horribly deprived until this moment.
(Progressive Politics, Liberal Religion, Sex, and the occasional abnormality that bubbles forth from goodness knows where.)

Saturday, February 21, 2009

"Warholization" has been replaced by "Faireyization"

Shepard Fairey is the guy who did that Obama poster that everyone is using and parodying. Above is a nice instance of the latter. Here's an example of Warholization. I really do think Warholization has been displaced by Faireyization, though people might end up calling it Obamaization (or Obamization-we don't like that vowel combo in that position too much) because most people don't know Fairey's name.

2 Comments:

We don't like that combination because it's un-Greek. Stem-vowels are normally dropped before an affix that begins with a vowel. But I think "we" are becoming increasingly tolerant of that sort of thing. The form of the name might also suggest "Obamatizaion," but that would require his name to be a third declension neuter, which is just absurd.

I think I'd agree, though to be frank I think "Warholization" has been on its way out the door for some time. Any meme like this has a built-in expiry, after which its use becomes so cliché as to be non-productive. What will be interesting to see is how long Fairey's style will remain productive. I'm sure there are already university classes delving into this, somewhere.

I find it rather ironic -- and somewhat disappointing -- that Fairey and the Associated Press were locked in intellectual property suits about his poster. It's particularly disappointing to me that they seem to be reaching a settlement, rather than hashing things out in court. Settling on this issue really leaves a cloud over the question of "What is derivative artwork?" I care about that, both as an artist and as someone who works with IP pretty much every day and has to make informed decisions on copyright issues. The irony, of course, is that the AP has fought rather hard with certain governments over freedom of expression and freedom of information; apparently they don't believe in practicing what they preach.

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